Those who find evolution convincing need to rethink it a lot more carefully because the evidence is really not there to the extent you think it is. I suspect you are accepting as evidence all sorts of assumptions, speculations and hypotheses that are not evidence, and are taking most of it on faith in spite of yourself.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

The wilful obtuseness of some of the evolutionists at EvC, such as exhibited in Percy's summation on a thread about the Flood is SO wearying. Really there's no point in that debate AT ALL. Good grief! Not that the creationists on that thread were particularly astute either but that's really beside the point. The obtuseness of the evolutionists is really something to marvel at.

This thread provided a showcase for the strong correlation between ignorance of all things geological and misinterpretation of geological evidence. The less you know the crazier the explanations that make sense to you.

I have no idea if there's anything fair about this statement or not since I didn't go back and review the thread and he gives no examples.

This thread also highlighted the inability or unwillingness of creationists to address evidence that was brought to their attention, for instance the fine sedimentary layers of varves

Often this is because the good evidence given by the creationists has been ignored or mangled beyond recognition and makes the claims on the other side irrelevant anyway. Beyond that, not having an answer for some of the multitudinous claims the evos make is to be expected. But the evidence FOR the Flood is prodigious without them, and they just have to be put aside for later. Meanwhile the evidence that HAS been given for the Flood needs to be acknowledged. Like years ago already.

or the miles of limestone that both require quiet water and the passage of much time.

This kind of statement is typical and ridiculous. It merely begs the question, assuming formation in situ, which fits evolutionist assumptions, not Floodist assumptions. The Flood concept assumes that the calcareous creatures that eventually made up the limestone, such as in the cliffs of Dover, were transported there on the Flood just as all the sediments were that make up the geologic column, and formed into rock in short order by the enormous pressures of the strata that were laid on top of them, that were washed away by the receding flood water. In other words the limestone deposits only "require quiet water and the passage of much time" to be FORMED IN PLACE. But the living creatures that make up the formation were not formed in place, that is, they did not live and die at that location. In fact how does one explain such an enormous dense concentration of them on such a supposition anyway? No, they were carried there from elsewhere, piled up together in one massive graveyard and then solidified by pressure from above, just as the other strata of the geologic column were.

Or how a flood could deposit the layers of the Grand Canyon and crush them into stone under a great weight, then erode the canyon itself.

I've explained this quite well in many blog posts here, but also at EvC, to deaf ears. I'd repeat it if the prospect of speaking to deaf ears weren't so tiring at the moment.

But evidence for the flood? Nowhere to be seen.

Talking to the deaf and blind is a lost cause. Get off EvC, creationists. Leave them to their delusions.

I can see a successor thread being useful.

The very thought of another exercise in bad creationism answered by ignorant evolutionism makes me SO tired I can hardly keep my eyes open.

===========Next day. They are continuing to summarize the thread without giving any actual information about what was said on the thread, just their empty opinions about it, so it's hard to take any of it up substantively.

There ought to be a rule that a summation at least describe the points made on the thread that they are answering or supporting, for the sake of readers who didn't have time to read the whole thread. Otherwise what's the point of a Summation at all. Oh, propaganda I suppose.

But I would like to comment on RAZD's summation, in which he's proposing a follow-up thread that focuses on evidence from particular fossils and from known floods, apparently oblivious to the fact that he's begging the question from the getgo: One thing the Noachian Flood would NOT be, is similar to any known local floods.

Coyotefollows that with another typical evolutionist begging of the question when he treats the dating of the strata as a foregone conclusion.

He does remind me that the creationist arguments were badly off target by identifying a particular sedimentary layer as the limit of the Flood. Utterly ridiculous. The Flood MUST account for ALL the layers, there's no way anything BUT such a Flood could explain any of them.

Then Dr A gives his usual contentless snarky sum-up.

At least Coyote gave some actual content from the thread, which is more than can be said for any of the rest of them. Oh, okay, Dr. A did mention that one creationist made the KT boundary his Flood level. It's important to have these things recognized. Beyond that Dr A just speaks in snarky analogies.========

Alas, the Great Flood has escaped detection even by two of the creationist participants on the thread, ICANT and IamJoseph who deny that the Flood would have done what obviously it did. One of them thinks the Flood's effects can be compared with the work of the periodic filling of the Bay of Fundy, ONE tiny inlet on planet earth. Sigh. The other thinks the Bible says the Flood was regional. Sigh. A mess of a thread altogether, and they are thinking of a follow-up thread? Oh give us a break.

==========9/30 1:30 AM I could cry my eyes out. Moose has given ICANTa post of the month nomination for his "refreshing" observation about the Bay of Fundy in his comment:

But if the Bay of Fundy can rise 55 feet in 6 hours and then fall 55 feet in 6 hours and you can't see everything washed away, why would anyone assume that if the water rose a few hundred feet in 40 days it would leave any sign that it did so?

I'm aghast, I'm stricken. I can hardly believe a person would HAVE to point out the stupidity of this comparison -- the ENTIRE EARTH COVERED WITH WATERFOR MONTHS AND MONTHS, saturating ALL the dry land on the entire planet, dissolving it, breaking it up into fine sediments, moving it rapidly down slopes along with all the living things that had inhabited that dry land, carrying it all plus the dead sea creatures as well, in its currents and waves and tides -- compared to the filling and emptying of a channel that undergoes this daily, routinely, a tiny little channel long since carved out by the elements. Truly I want to cry. A Noah's Flood of tears. For days, weeks.

===And yet another day and RAZD (now Zen Deist, keep forgetting) adds another summation. Are these people thinking at all?

Hi everyone,Message 63 presents what I consider would be the best evidence for a global flood, mass extinctions, and also why the number and timing of such events is not consistent with a biblical flood.

Of course he may be talking to one of the creationists who has the absurd idea that the Flood level can be marked by a particular layer of sediment, but in any case he thinks you can see extinction events in differences between the fossil contents of particular strata, which of course you can't because they were laid down by the Flood waters and ALL the fossils within ALL of them are evidence of the huge extinction brought about by the Flood.

Likewise Trilobites, Mountains and Marine Deposits - Evidence of a flood? presents why I consider fossil evidence of marine life to be evidence of normal marine growth on ocean bottoms, as occurs today, and not evidence for a biblical flood.

Sigh. Here's the post he's referring to:

There are fossil marine deposits on virtually every mountain, including Mt Everest.These fossil deposits are all of mature marine life, clams many years old, etcetera. If they are evidence of a world wide flood then:

(1) the flood was much longer in duration than is the published conjecture, or

(2) the marine environment was unusually productive, in which case we come to the problem of trilobites ... and all other extinct marine fauna and flora from the Precambrian through the marine dinosaurs ... not surviving the flood.

Thus you have a logical contradiction.

Evidence of multiple layers of mature marine environments on mountains is rather evidence of long ages -- ages to form mature marine environments, ages to cover them, ages for the other mature marine environments to form, and ages for the sedimentary basin to be pushed up into mountains by tectonic activity.

Unbelievable. They are "mature" therefore they couldn't have been deposited there by a Flood, or the Flood must have been of much longer duration? What are these people thinking? All the Flood did was MOVE things around, it was not an ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH THINGS LIVED for pete's sake. The clams were mature wherever the Flood found them. The "marine environments" were ALREADY formed during the time preceding the Flood. What IS the matter with these people?

And go read the next few posts in that thread as well to find out they think that the sheer volume of dead marine life within the sediments within mountains REFUTES the Flood? Nay, it CONFIRMS it. I cannot fathom the bizarre mentality here.

And on the Flood model there IS no "Precambrian" period because it is simply the lowest rocks of the stack of strata. I can only sit here and shake my head. And none of the creationists on that thread objected to this stupidity? Well, perhaps they did, I haven't taken the time to read through it, but if they did nobody was paying any attention. He goes on:

Floods do not build mountains and floods do not sort debris.

"Floods?" How can anyone in their right mind even think for half a minute that the earth's being completely covered by water for a year can be compared to ordinary floods? What is the matter with their heads? And nobody said the Flood built the mountains. What we all say is that tectonic movement occurred as part of the Flood scenario, as volcanoes did as well, triggering such movements. The mountain building went on for some time after the Flood waters had drained away or mostly drained away -- many huge lakes were left standing probably for many years afterward. The mountain building occurred in the post-Flood period. What STUPIDITY to say anyone thinks the Flood itself BUILT the mountains!

Erosion from impounded water breaking through levees do not create the patterns seen in the Grand Canyon and other canyons, and especially do not produce the erosion patterns that winds produce.

Huh? Words fail me. All I can do is cry at the nonsense, the futility of such discussions.

The erosion from these kinds of events is more consistent with the scablands: wide flat scoured troughs. Thus a biblical flood cannot explain the evidence of the Grand Canyon, the evidence of many long years of gradual erosion by wind and rain and the undercutting of the river at the bottom.

The years of erosion SINCE the FLood are NEVER confused WITH the work of the Flood by any sane thinker. And anyone in his right mind should know a mere river could not have cut that canyon. YOUR FLOOD IS TOO SMALL!!! GOOD GRIEF!

I agree with ICANT (Message 317) that it is unlikely that a flood of such short duration as the biblical flood would need to leave any significant evidence of the flood -- it is too short a time for marine growth to occur in the manner shown by the fossil evidence. This is why evidence for mass extinction is more critical, and Message 63 shows why that argument fails.

MARINE GROWTH???? Where does this STUPID idea about GROWTH of anything come from in relation to a worldwide Flood that only KILLED things? Or extinction events as interpreted by a lack of fossils in a slab of sediment. Something is so wrong with people's heads at EvC they should shut the whole thing down. It's insanity at such a level it's hard to know where to begin. The only sensible thing to do is cry your eyes out over such a misuse of the mind.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Somebody got the message about how science (in this case Geology) SHOULD be presented but I wonder if he'll do what's needed with it.

Dr. Adequate has acknowldged the problem I've objected to over and over here about how all we're ever given is the CONCLUSIONS Geology (or Evolutionary Biology) has arrived at without the thinking that led to them.

He even acknowledged that the textbooks we creationists are always told to read don't address these questions but just try to cram what they consider to be established dogma into the reader.

On second and third thoughts and pondering his list of topics I'm less than thrilled with the course design, as noted below. It's nice to have the familiar problem acknowledged that he's outlined above but I'm now doubting that he's really going to address it where it counts. Wait and see I guess.

The objective of this course is to show how it is possible to reconstruct the past history of the Earth from our present observation of the rocks.

It will differ from other textbooks in that it will place a strong emphasis on asking and answering the question: "How do we know?" Most textbooks report certain aspects of geological knowledge simply as things that are known: for example, that granite is an igneous rock, or that sandstone with certain properties is aeolian; or that the Earth's core is iron; but without addressing, or at least without systematically addressing, the question of how these things are known in such a way as to satisfy the doubts of the skeptical or the inquisitiveness of the curious.

As a result, the average geology textbook does fairly poor service to the skeptical, or to those who wish to debate and convince the skeptical. It also, in my view, does a disservice to the science of geology itself: for the story of geology is in effect the world's longest-running detective story, and it is more interesting if geology is presented as such than as a collection of facts handed down from on high.

Course outline

Finding the right order in which to structure a course in geology is perhaps the most perplexing decision facing its author. No solution is ideal, because (with the exception of the definition of basic terms, which clearly should come first) it would be best if every topic could be discussed last, so that the reader can come to it with the rest of the course as context. As this is impossible, some sort of compromise has to be made.

The contents of the course will be as follows:

(1) Rocks and minerals: in which I explain what is a mineral, what is a rock, what are sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks.

Very basic stuff which I believe I know quite well from various trips around the internet as needed.

(2) Weathering and erosion: a look at mechanical weathering, chemical weathering, and erosion.

Not sure this discussion would add anything to my store of knowledge either.

(3) Sedimentology: a systematic look at all the different types of sediment and their corresponding sedimentary rocks --- peat and coal; glacial till and tillite; deserts and aeolian sandstone; coccoliths and chalk; etc, etc, etc.

I also believe I'm up on all these categories just as phenomena. But perhaps he'll touch on some area that is controversial for a Floodist. We'll see.

(4) Plate tectonics: in which we describe how it is known that plates move, what is know of the mechanisms, and what effects this has in terms of faulting, folding, orogeny, ophiolites, terranes, etc.

I believe I'm up on these things too with the exception of ophiolites, which a quick glance at Wikipedia takes care of anyway.

Second thought, terrane is a complicated subject that would be interesting to see discussed but I have no reason to think it poses any particular difficulties for a Floodist

(5) Stratigraphy: a discussion of actualism, of Steno's principles, of way-up marks, of cross-cutting relationships, of the geological column, of index fossils, and so forth. This may also be a good place to discuss paleoclimatology.

I guess it depends on what he does with this stuff whether it's going to be of any use to a Floodist or not.

(6) Absolute dating: those dating methods other than the relative methods of stratigraphy. This will include a look at some of the methods of more doubtful value, such as fluoride dating and racemization.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get much out of this discussion because I'm familiar with how it goes with evolutionists. But again, we'll see.

At that point I shall have done what I set out to do, in that the reader will then have a grasp of the principles of historical geology. However, it may be that the readership will have further questions. In particular, the reader may want to see some historical geology actually done, or in other words to see some case studies. It may be possible to continue the discussion along these lines.

Awfully awfully basic as presented here.

Note on sources

It will not be necessary to give references for notions which are the common property of geologists, such as the definition of a mineral or the fact that granite is felsic. However, I shall provide references to the more abstruse or particular facts to which I allude.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Pressie for volunteering to review the material. Any remaining errors are, of course, my fault.

If nothing else, probably I'll be able to conclude that I didn't need the geology course after all that the evolutionists keep telling us we need. I didn't think I did because I've picked up so much off the internet over the years, but it would be nice to have it confirmed that a course isn't really going to offer anything different.

The question How do they know? isn't crucial for such things as how rocks form but for how they arrive at conclusions such as the claim that a particular rock layer was formed in air while another was formed in water, and mostly all the claims about ancient landscapes -- how they identify ancient deserts or bodies of water and how long they supposedly persisted. It's the unwitnessed past abaout which they make such flat-out assertions of knowingness that really needs the answers to How do they know this or that, not so much the factual stuff like what rocks are made of.

And although I know there is no sensible answer, there are also the questions of how they got themselves convinced that the fossils represent creatures that lived and died on that spot, how they think a series of flat slabs of rock could represent a time period at all, how they think loose sediments deposited in some cases over a hundred thousand miles of area could become such flat horizontal rock without enormous pressure from above, how they think that a bit of loose gravel at the interface between two flat slabs of rock constitutes the sort of erosion that occurs on exposed surface of land.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Darwin spends much time on the question of just what exactly constitutes a species as opposed to a variety. In Chapter 2, Variation Under Nature, he writes:

Many years ago, when comparing, and seeing others compare, the birds from the separate islands of the Galapagos Archipelago, both one with another, and with those from the American mainland, I was much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties. On the islets of the little Madeira group there are many insects which are characterized as varieties in Mr Wollaston's admirable work, but which it cannot be doubted would be ranked as distinct species by many entomologists. Even Ireland has a few animals, now generally regarded as varieties, but which have been ranked as species by some zoologists.

Richard Leakey, who wrote the introduction and edited the abridgment of the edition of the Origin I've been reading lately, says:

[Darwin's] opponents believed that each species had been separately created by God, but that varieties had arisen within these species by natural variation.

This would be a reasonable distinction from the creationist point of view today as well, if there were any way to know which was which with any certainty, but even now when we have the science of genetics it isn't always possible to know. In Darwin's day it was entirely a matter of the degree of difference in appearance from other groups as subjectively judged. When a new distinct group was known to have descended from another it was called a variety, but in most cases this was not known for wild species, so naturalists determined which was which according to the degree of difference they thought they could identify from observation.

It's tempting to quote Darwin at great length where he describes the species-variety confusions of his day because it's really quite fascinating to see how they thought about these things in those days, but Darwin's main intention in spelling it all out was to lay the groundwork for his theory of how a species can evolve into another species, as Leakey says:

Hence Darwin's overriding objective is to minimze the distinction between species and varieties

Where to draw the line between species and varieties is still the problem for creationists, though no longer for evolutionists, who have found an objective way of defining a species -- not necessarily true of course, but objective at least. As Leakey puts it: (62)

Modern biologists would define a species as a group of individuals all of which can potentially interbreed one with another. This is a working definition which holds good in the majority of cases. There are anomalies however, some of which Darwin deals with ...

So evolutionists have a definition of species that sounds fairly definite and objective although of course they maintain that a species can eventually change to the point of producing another species. But at least since a species in Darwin's time was subjectively determined by judgment from the appearance of the creature, meaning there was no way to establish it as fact, so now there seems to be a criterion that works and at least puts a stop to the subjective uncertainties.

But now creationists have been deprived of the very term species. It has now been defined to support the theory of evolution, assuming endless ability to change from one species to another, where it used to imply the immutability attached to special creation. Consequently, creationists have had to scramble to find a different term to refer to the Biblical created kinds, sometimes resorting to "type" or "group," and sometimes using that very Biblical term, kind. The problem is that all the relevant terms are more or less interchangeable. Species simply means "kind" or "class" or "type."

But the earlier creationists had already stretched the concept of the Biblical created kinds to such an extent that it had lost all meaning anyway. Creationist naturalists had no problem splitting many of what today would be considered to be immutable separate Species -- such as Cats or Dogs or even possibly Birds -- into several species rather than varieties, considering them to be special creations in their own right, judging subjectively by the appearance of their differences. Creationists in those days could very easily have accepted Darwin's many "species" of finches for instance, regarding them as separate creations. (And this way of artificially multiplying species, which evolutionists continue to do today, is the reason for the challenge by evolutionists that there would have been far too many species ever to have fit on the ark. But if most of what are now called species are really just varieties of an original Kind, room on the ark for the species of that ancient time is not a problem).

But these days the evolutionist redefinition of species now precludes this kind of classification for creationists. And that's a good thing. This is one of the effects of Darwin's work for which I think we should thank him. It seems to me easy to sympathize with Darwin's objection to the arbitrariness of the subjective distinctions of his day. There was clearly a need for a more objective system to distinguish a species from a variety, and not only biology in general but also creationism could only stagnate under the imprecise subjectivity of classification he criticized.

Of course creationists must object to the evolutionist definition, but thanks to that definition we are now forced back to the Biblical perspective. The unbiblical idea of separate creations after the original creation described in Genesis had to be abandoned, the readiness to assume that striking differences between groups make them species as opposed to varieties had to go, the glib explaining-away of odd phenomena as simply having been created for some purpose had to give way to an empirical way of thinking about those things.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Despite creationist objections to Darwin and to the theory of evolution that developed from his work, it really ought to be recognized and acknowledged that some of Darwin's observations have been of value to creationism, as well as to biology in general. I just realized this after some rereading of his Origin of Species and being reminded of the impression I had when I first read it back before I was a Christian. I enjoyed the book enormously then. I always enjoyed reading someone who could lead me through a well-presented argument and Darwin does that in his careful measured way. He's a genuine thinker. His observations are well described and well used in the service of his theory; his conclusions are logical and easy to follow.

This time around I have an entirely different perspective, of course. I notice things I wouldn't have noticed forty years ago; I have objections I didn't have then. But in spite of all that I find myself again impressed with his methodical presentation of evidence and clear arguments.

This time around I was also struck by some ideas for which I think he should even be thanked by creationists. The creationism of Darwin's day was a pretty subjective affair that needed the sharp kicks Darwin administered in his Origin. Special Creation as it was called then was such a feeble excuse for a scientific position it didn't take much to topple it, and even his first edition changed many minds, as he indicates in the Preface to a later edition:

Until recently the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created.

"Until recently" means "until the publication of the first edition of the Origin of Species."

I'm sure it seems that a creationist should grieve at the success of Darwin's argument for evolution, but the creationism he reveals in his book is not the creationism it should have been. For one thing, the idea of special creation of immutable species was used to explain anything and everything. Whatever was observed was attributed to the organism's having been created for that purpose. At the beginning of Chapter 9, Hybridism, for instance, Darwin says:

"The view commonly entertained by naturalists is that species, when intercrossed, have been specially endowed with sterility in order to prevent their confusion."

That is, sterility is observed in some hybrids and the explanation from special creation is that they were made that way for a purpose. It's the sort of answer that would stop all thought in its tracks rather than stimulate further investigation into the reason for the sterility.

In Chapter 13, Geographical Distribution, he says something that suggests that the belief in special creation included the unbiblical idea of continuing or periodic creation over time, which is far from the once-for-all-time creation as described in Genesis.

Here he's commenting on an island devoid of mammals and remarks:

"It cannot be said that there has not been time for the creation of mammals; many volcanic islands are sufficiently ancient...."

Of course there would be no question of the time needed if the prevailing creationist view was that all living things had been created at once as reported in Genesis 1 and not created for particular locations at later particular times.

And he goes on to demonstrate the uselessness, even the absurdity of the creationist understanding:

"Although terrestrial mammals do not occur on oceanic islands, aerial mammals occur on almost every island..." "Why has the supposed creative force produced bats and no other mammals on remote islands?"

He answers that the most probable explanation is they weren't created just for the islands, it's simply that bats could have flown the distance whereas terrestrial animals had no way to get there.

At the end of Chapter 5, Laws of Variation, he is objecting to an idea about the genus that includes horses that was prevalent in his time, that

"...each [equine] species was independently created with a tendency to vary ... so as often to become striped like the other species of the genus," and "created with a strong tendency, when crossed with species inhabiting distant quarters of the world, to produce hybrids resembling in their stripes, not their own parents, but other species of the genus.

To admit this view is, as it seems to me, to reject a real for an unreal, or at least an unkonwn, cause. It makes the works of God a mere mockery and deception; I would almost as soon believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists that fossil shells had never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells living on the sea-shore.

I have to say that I agree. Even back then it would have been far more reasonable to consider that the separate "species" in the genus were in fact varieties of the same species, and that the striping showed up as a reversion to a characteristic of the species closest to the original. It comes off as a cop-out, or intellectual laziness, to invoke God's purpose to explain such a phenomenon.

It looks like Darwin has done quite a good job of thoroughly trouncing some of the creationist ideas of his day, and it seems to me they needed to be trounced. The creationist ideas were subjective and silly, but more important, they weren't Biblical. They had already been much compromised by what naturalists of the day thought science had proved, which is always the big danger for creationism. Creationists had been rationalizing the Biblical revelation away to accommodate the current interpretation of the evidence, and this still goes on among some who consider themselves creationists. Seems to me Darwin illuminated a problem and to a great extent even solved it, so that biology could move in a more constructive direction and creationists could regroup from a Biblical perspective, which they must do if they are to hope for any success in answering evolution.

What is the point of allowing this sort of tedious evasiveness to continue?

Dr A refuses to connect with what Just Being Real means about about the burying of the polystrate trees and I doubt that if JBR had said it even as precisely as possible he'd respond more to the point anyway:

JBR: No I totally get that you are saying the layers were laid down quickly, what I don't get is that they are sepperated by ...millions of years.

Dr. A: No they aren't. This is why no-one ever ever ever said they were.

JBR: That sir, I do not get at all.

Dr. A: The fact that the scenario which you have made up in your head seems implausible even to you might serve as a hint that it is not the scenario asserted by geologists.

Again, why is this kind of exchange allowed? Dr. A. and all the other evolutionists must know what the creationist objection is even if the creationist doesn't have all his i's dotted and t's crossed in his description.

The trees penetrate through TWO OR MORE LAYERS, layers that are normally identified by geologists by time period names that are assigned to periods of millions of years EACH. If the lower layer is supposedly 300 million years old and the layer above it supposedly 200 million years old then we have a time elapse of 100 million years between the two layers that no tree could possibly have survived intact if exposed to the elements for any part of that time. The lower part of the tree would have been fossilized in the lower layer, but the upper part would have had to wait for the upper layer to be deposited. Even evolutionists should be startled if they find part of a fossil protruding out of its "time period" into another.

THIS is what you should be answering, Dr. A. Your flat-out denial is actually against the rules at EvC, and someone should slap your wrist.

RAZD did give what may be the preferred geological explanation, which I note in the post on this subject below, that the first layer completely covered the tree and fossilized it at that time. Then, after becoming stone I assume (which itself is impossible without the weight of higher layers), it was eroded down to its current level and the next layer was deposited on top of it. That would fit the usual thinking of geologists who invent erosion between strata where obviously there was no erosion of any recognizable sort that normally occurs on this planet, the evidence against such a conjecture being the nice neat horizontal interface between the two layers.

No answers yet to the polystrate trees challenge, just the usual impossible fantasy answers and the usual flat-out bullheaded denials.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Typical "Scientific" Mystification as expressed at Wikipedia about the supposed formation of the Grand Canyon:

Geology of the Grand Canyon areaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The geology of the Grand Canyon area exposes one of the most complete and studied sequences of rock on Earth. The nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon and in the Grand Canyon National Park area range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old.

Considering the highly speculative history of determining the age of rocks you'd think they'd be a little more circumspect in their oh-so-definite assertions of this sort.

Most were deposited in warm, shallow seas and near ancient, long-gone sea shores in western North America.

Now I'm sure this is all based on an interpretation of some of the contents of the various strata but why do they only give us their conclusions in such flat-out assertive language instead of some discussion of how they arrived at it? What genuine Science talks like this? I'd really like to see the evidence for the warm shallow seas -- contents of the rocks that normally LIVE in warm shallow seas or what? And for the long-gone sea shores. Are there shoreline rings and that sort of thing somewhere? See, I'm a believer in the Flood, so I'm going to have a very different interpretation of whatever the evidence is that they interpret as warm shallow seas and sea shores. For instance, if it's the fossil contents of the rocks that lead to warm shallow seas because that is those creatures normal habitat when alive, the Flood interpretation would say that they were carried there and died there and didn't live on that spot. If there is evidence of old shorelines near the Grand Canyon, I have no doubt they represent a body of water that was left standing after the Flood for some period of time, long enough to leave the shoreline marks.

Both marine and terrestrial sediments are represented ...

Ah, a factual statement amidst the fantasy. That goes nowhere though. I'm sure they can say what makes the sediments marine or terrestrial, but if they were transported there on the Flood all that distinction refers to is their place of origin. It certainly wasn't the walls of the Grand Canyon.

...at least including fossilized sand dunes from an extinct desert.

And now back to speculative interpretion. You know this how? Your evidence is what? Any creationist writing like this would be scathingly dismissed as an idiot. Again, whatever the evidence that leads them to fossilized sand dunes, their sand had to have been transported on the Flood to their present resting place. And again, why don't they describe their evidence?

There are at least 14 known unconformities in the geologic record found in the Grand Canyon area.

Another of the very rare factual statements, presented without a hint as to their relevance or scientific import. Second thought: Depends on what sort of unconformity they're talking about. There is certainly a huge "angular unconformity" at the base of the canyon which I've discussed many times before, but there is also a purely fictional "unconformity" that is a "missing" layer, that is, a layer of fossilized sediment that their theory says is supposed to be there but isn't. Of course there isn't the faintest sign that such a layer was ever there; the strata are all just as neatly and tightly and horizontally stacked through those "periods" of "unconformity" as everywhere else in the column.

Uplift of the region started about 75 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny; a mountain-building event that is largely responsible for creating the Rocky Mountains to the east. In total the Colorado Plateau was uplifted an estimated 2 miles (3.2 km). The adjacent Basin and Range province to the west started to form about 18 million years ago as the result of crustal stretching. A drainage system that flowed through what is today the eastern Grand Canyon emptied into the now lower Basin and Range province. Opening of the Gulf of California around 6 million years ago enabled a large river to cut its way northeast from the gulf. The new river captured the older drainage to form the ancestral Colorado River, which in turn started to form the Grand Canyon.

You see how they talk as if this is observed fact rather thaninterpretation of various geological formations. Obviously we're expected to just sit quietly and receive it unquestioningly as revelation from Those Who Know, without a discussion of how they arrived at it, without evidence or anything to engage us in thinking about it.

Anyway, again, I would really like to know what the evidence is for this mountain building period, and actually I don't doubt that there IS evidence, what I doubt is their interpretation of the evidence. Especially of course the time factork, how it got associated with a particular block of sediment layers. And I love thinking about this stuff. I've many times wondered about the formation of the Great Basin as well as the Grand Canyon, love to look at maps that show the topography clearly.

The interpretation from the Flood perspective includes volcanic and tectonic activity as part of the Flood event, perhaps causing it to some extent or caused by it, in any case associated with it. It's frustrating to read the descriptions from the establishment point of view that don't provide enough fact for a Floodist to think about. All you get is the Official Party Line. If I could afford a good geology book or an online course in geology MAYBE it would give the evidence behind such things? Or maybe not -- probably not part of a basic course. Ideally one could ask a geologist about all these things but they are a prickly bunch with creationists. For all their supposed interest in educating us stupid creationists at EvC, if you start asking questions to clarify such things for your own purposes, forget it, they don't want to give you a free education, go take a course.

Wetter climates brought upon by ice ages starting 2 million years ago greatly increased excavation of the Grand Canyon, which was nearly as deep as it is now by 1.2 million years ago. Volcanic activity deposited lava over the area 1.8 million to 500,000 years ago. At least 13 lava dams blocked the Colorado River, forming lakes that were up to 2,000 feet (610 m) deep. The end of the last ice age and subsequent human activity has greatly reduced the ability of the Colorado River to excavate the canyon. Dams in particular have upset patterns of sediment transport and deposition. Controlled floods from Glen Canyon Dam upstream have been conducted to see if they have a restorative effect. Earthquakes and mass wasting erosive events still affect the region

What might have some basis in reasonable deduction from evidence is so mingled with what is most likely sheer conjecture based on nothing but assumption, and the possibly reasonable deduction is presented so utterly devoid of evidence for it in any case, EVERYBODY should object to this sort of thing, not just creationists. But no, anti-creationists accept it as wisdom from on high and offered as science, expect a creationist to swallow it without question or else be branded an anti-scientific ignoramus. How ironic, how sad. I really want to see the signs of the lakes that were backed up behind lava dams, what traces did they leave? What is the evidence of ice involvement?

Well, the rest of the article goes on in the same vein, a mix of a few facts that just stick out like islands among one description after another of purely fantastical ancient deserts and seas and so on that of course nobody was there to witness and can therefore be nothing but speculation based on who-knows-what, and the who-knows-what is of course not given, because this is NOT science, this is Fantasy.

Sigh.

Here's a thread of my own at EvC that spun off one on the Grand Canyon, in which I take pains to be clear about what I mean about the difference between conjecture and fact. Unfortunately here and there I wasn't quite as clear as I thought I was being and I'd make some changes now, but the basic idea is still there. But all anyone did in response to my pains was make absurd straw man arguments.

I'll try to state it again now:

The reason references to ancient landscapes, deserts, inland seas and whatnot are conjecture as opposed to fact is that there is no way to validate (or invalidate) the interpretation. It conjures up a scenario in the distant past that is described almost as if it had been seen, but nobody witnessed it so there is no way to corroborate the conjecture; it remains forever a conjecture although they treat it as a fact.

There's nothing wrong with conjecture of course, it's the normal first step to a scientific explanation; perhaps it should be called a hypothesis. The problem is that any other possible interpretations of the same facts that led them to a particular conjecture are pre-empted when they don't bother to describe the facts and that renders the favored interpretation unfalsifiable.

Exactly what is the factual evidence that leads them to the scenario of an inland sea on the North American continent, for instance? I'd really like to know but that part they normally leave out of the discussion. Of course I suspect that "inland sea" would be well interpreted as a stage of the receding Flood. A slow-draining leftover body of water could probably explain the facts quite nicely if only the facts were available. Not a sea that stood for millions of years, but perhaps weeks or months or a few years.

Someone on that old thread compared my argument to an argument whether the claim that Henry the 8th was King of England was fact or conjecture. There is no comparison and it was irritating to have someone try to hang that on me. Henry the 8th had witnesses galore, histories written about him and no doubt all kinds of vestiges of his existence and influence remain in English institutions as well. Paintings of his royal self abound. Show me a photo of the ancient landscape you've conjured up. An "ancient desert" has NOTHING from its own time to show for itself. Henry the 8th had corroborating evidence; inventions of ancient scenarios have nothing to corroborate them. And really, it is STUPID to make such a comparison.

Where's the data that should be available to scientists who want to test your theory? Laboratory science is replicable by anyone. This kind of "science" remains conjecture forever although ordained as Fact.

Monday, September 12, 2011

The insanity on the Polystrate trees thread at EvC is beyond me right now timewise and patience-wise. The sheer meanness is part of it, the obtuseness, possibly willful, another part. Just Being Real made a somewhat muddled but otherwise reasonable post on the subject and he's being torn to shreds. He hasn't stayed around and frankly I hope he never comes back. There's nothing positive to be gained from continual beating of a brick wall, and that's what they are there.

Many Geologists say that the strata layers of the geologic column are representative of millions of years of time. In this discussion I will refer to them as uniformitarian geologists, but with the understanding that not all conventional geologists are “strict” uniformitarians. In opposition is a group of geologists who believe that the strata was laid down during a world wide geologically recent global flood. I will refer to them in this discussion as creation geologists or YEC geologists.

It's a little garbled perhaps but you'd think by now after years of debate the evolutionists would know what he means to say and recognize it as a correct reading of what Geology teaches. But no, they have to deny that Geology ever taught such a thing as that the strata represent millions of years of time. The obtuseness with which they manage to distort this simple point is astonishing really, however typical.

Here's Dr. A's nastily obtuse rendering:

No-one, anywhere, ever, has claimed that a single distinct sedimentary layer in a sedimentary formation necessarily corresponds to millions of years of time.

JBR of course was not referring to a single distinct sedimentary layer but to a block of sediments assigned to a time period. But it's in Dr. A's sadistic interest not to be able to fathom JBR's somewhat vague way of putting it.

Here's Moose's:

All of those links go to illustrations of the geologic time scale (aka "THE geologic column").

There are no strata (rock) layers in those illustrations. They say nothing about sedimentation rates.

Well, there may not be any strata in those illustrations of the geologic column but there are in this one:

And in fact in this illustration there is a single distinct sedimentary layer ascribed some millions of years of time -- the Redwall Limestone = The Mississippian period lasting from 359 to 318 millions of years ago, or 41 million years according to Wikipedia.

Then Boof has no idea what might be meant by a "uniformitarian geologist."

If the communication problem is that bad there is no point in having a debate at all. By now all those responders should know what JBR is getting at and instead of just denying that it has any meaning discuss what they think Geology DOES really say. Dr. A accuses JBR and everybody else of ignorance of Geology but as usual doesn't offer one word of information about what he thinks Geology does say. Which always suggests it's one huge bluff really.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Here comes JAR with his usual wrongheaded assertions (no, no evidence here) against the Flood of Noah.

To mention "fossils" when talking about the Biblical Flood is of course simply silly. The Biblical Flood, if it had happened, was far too recent to have anything to do with fossils.

Too recent to have anything to do with fossils? 4500 years isn't enough time? Even though evolutionists claim that fossils are being formed every day in our own time in far more mundane circumstances than the global biblical Flood? Excuse me? The Flood buried bazillions of living things which would have been made into fossils in a lot less time than 4500 years. I've seen discussions, probably creationist of course since evolutionists are committed to not knowing such things, that show the process occurring in a matter of years in caves that drip calcium carbonate. If I find such a discussion I'll post it.

The Biblical Flood myths say that all the critters on land and in the air with the exception of those critters on the fictional ark were killed during a very short period.

If that were true, then every land and air critter living today, plant or animal, would be descended from the few critters on the ark.

Very true and they are.

That would leave a genetic bottleneck marker in EVERY single living species of plant of animal, and the marker would be only a relatively few generations back.

If the Biblical Flood happened, then that marker MUST be there.

It ain't.

Case closed.

I've heard this bit of evolutionist lore many times by now, but I have NEVER ONCE SEEN AN EXPLANATION OF EXACTLY WHAT "MARKER" WOULD POINT TO A BOTTLENECK. Perhaps I merely missed it but I've been looking for some time whenever this subject comes up and all that's offered is this assertion, perhaps some ridicule and choice epithets along with it, BUT NO CLUE AS TO WHAT THE MARKER MIGHT BE THAT WOULD DEMONSTRATE THE BOTTLENECK IN QUESTION.

Now that it's come up again perhaps I'll be motivated to make a more dogged search for such information.

But meanwhile I wanted to highlight JAR's post because of something I just learned about these things that opens up a new answer to the question. I've been rereading Morris and Parker's What Is Creation Science? over the last few days, one of the first books on creationism I read after becoming a Christian, and besides recognizing many points they make that I've made my own in this debate although I'd forgotten their source, I've also run across some points that illuminate some things I hadn't digested and am only now beginning to think about.

One of them suggests an answer to just what WOULD be the genetic indicators of the bottleneck at the Flood and they aren't the sort of "marker" that would jump out at you but something a geneticist today would simply take for granted as the normal state of the genome. Whenever I've gone that far into this part of the debate I find myself wondering about a formerly much bigger genome --polyploidy for instance, which never really fit but now I have a better understanding anyway -- from which it would be easier to imagine descent of all the life forms we see today and extravagantly more varieties before the Flood as well, which certainly must have been the case BECAUSE of such an extreme bottleneck.

No, not a bigger genome, but a different genetic situation along more ordinary lines:

Parker describes how all the varieties of humans and animals are easily accounted for by simple Mendelian genetics combining a given built-in array of genes for various traits. The example he gave was of two parents with "medium" or "average" skin color, expressed as AaBb, with the capital letters representing the darkest and the lower case the lightest, saying that EVERY shade of skin that we see on earth can be produced from those two parents, from the darkest African (AABB)to the lightest Scandinavian (aabb). When you think of every other trait as genetically expressed by the same formula, it becomes clear that an enormous variety of combinations would produce an enormous variety of types or varieties or races -- of people and animals of all kinds -- which would become characteristic of groups as they migrated and became geographically isolated from one another.

And all this incredible variety requires is normal sexual recombination AND HETEROZYGOSITY of the traits.

He also gave this statistic on page 112: "[evolutionist Francisco Ayala] says that human beings are "heterozygous" for 6.7% of their genes, on the average. That means that 6 or 7 times in a 100, the pair of genes for a given trait differ like the genes for brown or blue eyes, or for rolling or not rolling the tongue. Now this may not seem like much. But Ayala calculates a single human couple with just "6.7% variety" could produce 10 to the 2,017 children ...before they would have to produce an identical twin..."

He goes on to say that the whole spectrum of skin color we see today would be easily produced IN ONE GENERATION with just this 6.7% heterozygosity for that trait. Combining that with the same breadth of possibilities for size, hair or fur color, bone type, muscle type, and so on and so forth, would certainly yield an enormous variety of individuals within each created kind or type.

So I figure this 6.7% heterozygosity is what remained on average to all creatures after the Flood, or perhaps it was somewhat more then and has decreased since then. It's still enough to produce enormous variety, everything we see today.

Well, what does a bottleneck do genetically anyway? Doesn't it produce HOMOZYGOSITY for a number of traits? Isn't that what happened to the cheetah -- it has reached the point genetically where most of its genes are fixed and no variety is possible at all. Since the cheetah is of course descended from the cats on the ark, with their already drastically reduced heterozygosity -- perhaps comparable to the 6.7% of human beings -- a later bottleneck would have reduced it even further to the current state of almost 100% fixed loci, so that each individual is almost a clone of all the others, and further variation is as good as impossible.

THERE'S YOUR "MARKER" JAR. Not what you were expecting but there it is. It wouldn't be recognizable in the genome because nobody is looking for it. The average heterozygosity seen today would be accepted as the norm for all human beings for all time. It wouldn't be suspected as a marker of anything, although the basic principle is quite well known.

So instead of the genetic complexities I was trying to imagine to account for the necessity of an enormously greater variety among humans and animals before the Flood, I now appreciate that simple ordinary everyday heterozygosity can account for it all, but presumably there would have been much MORE heterozogosity for a much greater number of genes or traits before the Flood. 100% back at Adam and Eve? 50%?

And to that I would like to add another "marker" of the bottleneck, one of my favorite topics, JUNK DNA -- which makes up something over 90% of the genome. You wouldn't suspect that as a sign of the bottleneck at the Flood, would you, JAR? But if it's what I keep thinking it must be, the record of the genetic death brought about by that bottleneck, as well as all the accumulated death from other causes of course, then its mere existence in the genome is very glaring evidence of the Flood, now to be added to the other marker, the very low incidence of heterozygosity that resulted from all that death. This genetic junkyard or graveyard is a hint at enormously more genetic possibilities at the Creation than exist today.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Evolutionists are so often maddeningly duplicitous. The "debate" is laughable enough without such sleazy stuff. Here's our friend Dr A pretending the perfectly apt term "polystrate" has something wrong with it just because creationists invented it:

Another poster says: The only sites that seem to mention polystrate fossils are creationist sites.

Dr. A says: That's 'cos polystrate is a word creationists made up, not a term in real geology.

Well, it's obviously an accurate term for an object that penetrates vertically through two or more rock layers, so geologists would do well to adopt it, and if they weren't such hidebound stuffy evolutionists they probably would.

I also think that they are the only people who claim that "geologists say that these sediments were deposited over millions of years".

I am a geologist and I don't.

Uh huh, but how disingenuous of you. Two peas in a pod you and Dr. A there.

Anyway.

Any normal person happening upon the many illustrations of the rock strata all neatly labelled ACCORDING TO WHAT GEOLOGISTS CALL TIME PERIODS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS -- dramatic case in point any diagram of the strata in the Grand Canyon -- ought to be treated with RESPECT for drawing the NATURAL INFERENCE that deposition must have occurred over those millions of years. Not to give that much basic respect is just a sign of the evolutionists lack of commitment to science and interest only in falsely calling creationists stupid.

HOWEVER, IF in the case of the polystrate trees you have SOME GOOD REASON to see the strata there laid down rapidly, THEN NOBODY AS YET HAS GIVEN THAT GOOD REASON BUT SIMPLY RESORTS TO NAMECALLING AND RANK-PULLING. Blech. AND, besides giving your reasons IN THAT PARTICULAR CASE for determining rapid deposition AND DISTINGUISHING THAT PARTICULAR case from other cases where the deposition is perhaps considered to be much slower, YOU ALSO MUST EXPLAIN how it is that two or more layers of rock, including a layer of coal, NORMALLY IDENTIFIED AS AGES OF MILLIONS OF YEARS, in this particular case are not to be so designated. BECAUSE: Even if the lower layer deposited rapidly, if it represents millions of years then the layer above it didn't BEGIN to deposit for those millions of years and that means the GEOLOGIC COLUMN ALL SO NEATLY LAID OUT IN TERMS OF SUCH MILLIONS OF YEARS PER SLAB OF ROCK IS BOGUS.

Oh but I don't expect an explanation from you. You like to posture and ridicule rather than make cogent points about such things, especially something that ought to be treated on the face of it as a SCIENTIFIC point for creationism.

============Next day: So some explanations are now being offered but first it's interesting to see that Pressie, the second evolutionist quoted above, really doesn't understand the creationist argument at all. I wonder how many evolutionists that's true of, because for all their arrogant sound of certainty they act as if they haven't a clue:

Sorry to interfere, but I’ve never understood creationist “arguments” on the so-called “polystrate” fossils. Maybe Just Being Real could enlighten me on this.

Just Being Real writes:

Each layer is usually said to be several million years old.

If the dating methods indicate that a “layer” is millions of years old, then that “layer” is millions of years old.

Just Being Real writes:

But this conclusion falls apart by the hundreds of polystrate fossils (like vertically fossilized trees) which pierce through the various layers. (Sometimes several layers)

This is the piece of creationist “argument” I really don’t understand. Why couldn’t a “layer” be deposited in a few days or weeks or years and is millions of years old now? Please Just Being Real, explain it to me.

He really DOESN'T get it. Amazing.

There is more than one layer, EACH separately designated by current Geology an era of time, EACH separately dated to some millions of years, the higher layer defined to be that many millions of years more recent than the lower. Any object that penetrates through BOTH layers, supposedly laid down so many millions of years apart from each other, would not have survived the wait for the upper layer to get laid down.

Just being real, I looked at your source here. Your source claims, in the second paragraph:

AIG writes:

Some geologists have claimed that even if all the vegetation on earth was suddenly converted to coal this would make a coal deposit only 1-3% of the known coal reserves on earth.

I see that there’s no reference to these “some geologists”. Do you have any reference, or is this a straw man being set up?

AIG writes:

Hence at least 33 Noah’s Floods are needed, staggered in time, to generate our known coal beds. Therefore a single Noah’s Flood cannot be the cause of coal formation.

I doubt that any scientist would even look into Noah’s flood, as there’s absolutely no empirical, objective evidence for it. The only people who would do this, would be Christian-creationists who abandoned the scientific method, but pretend to do science by using sciency-sounding terms.

Oh, and by the way, I see that your source didn’t even discuss the geology of coal deposits in any form in his religious article. He didn’t even mention the word “layers” (I might be mistaken, could you direct me to the word “layer” in that article?).

The word “layer” is a very bad layman’s term for some strata, anyway. How do you get to the words “strata layers” from that article? How does coal relate to "most" strata layers? In my country we have hundreds of thousands of strata, just in the coal-bearing sequences, with only very thin zones of coal-bearing strata dispersed amongs them.

Oh dear, these scientists can be so stuffy about their jargon. A layer IS a stratum. The one is English, the other is Latin.

The point, Dear Pressie, is in the AGES assigned to the strata. In many cases only one kind of rock is designated as a particular time period, in others there may be many layers within a time period. There can be many thin layers of coal interspersed between many kinds of sedimentary rock all designated as one time period. You fail to indicate what time period has been assigned to the strata in question in your country. The thickness or thinness of the layer is not important to the point being made. The question is whether there is a line of demarcation that separates one age or time period from another, and if an organic object is found to have penetrated through both "time periods" or more than two, it casts serious doubt on the very system of dating itself. That is, the polystrate fossils show that these are NOT time periods at all, but sedimentary layers all deposited within a brief period of one another. And they ARE rightly called layers, all of them. They are all found to have been laid down horizontally originally, sedimentary layers and coal layers both.

And now in the next post here comes RAZD to try to clear up Pressie's problem:

Hi Pressie

Sorry to interfere, but I’ve never understood creationist “arguments” on the so-called “polystrate” fossils. Maybe Just Being Real could enlighten me on this.

Message 189: I also think that they are the only people who claim that "geologists say that these sediments were deposited over millions of years".I am a geologist and I don't.

Nice to see another geologist on the forum.

In essence what they are doing is (a) finding fossils that extend through several layers of deposition, and (b) claiming that each layer was formed "over millions of years" thus creating an apparent paradox for the preservation of the fossil.

Excuse me, but creationists are not "claiming" anything that has not first been stated by establishment Geology. If we understand FROM GEOLOGY that a particular layer or sequence of layers is designated by a particular time period name (say "Mississippian") and identified as having persisted for such and such millions of years, and identified as well by its specific fossil contents, which are said to have lived in that particular "era" or time period, which is what Geology says about the strata everywhere you look, we draw the LOGICAL CONCLUSION that any fossil found out of its particular time period calls in question the whole scheme of attributing time periods to the rocks at all. This is one of those phenomena that OUGHT to falsify the whole scheme, but evolutionists can always make up SOMETHING to rationalize it away.

The problem is that (b) hasn't been shown to apply to the cases that involve (a), AND there are other explanations for preserved fossils extending through many layers of sediment.

Right. When you find something that doesn't fit the scheme, simply declare that something to be an exception to the rule. But since ALL the other discussions of the strata assign time periods to them, paste the Geologic Timetable over them, it is rank duplicity to pretend that those that most clearly call the whole system into question are *really* outside that system.

You owe an explanation for this phenomenon and you are not giving one. In fact you owe EVIDENCE that anything of this sort occurred.

A fossil specimen can be buried by soft materials\sediments during the fossilization process, and this softer material can subsequently be eroded away before the next layer of sediment is deposited -- creationists often ignore (or are ignorant of) erosion as part of the process.

No, the fact is that there is not one SHRED OF EVIDENCE for the periods of erosion claimed by mainstream geology. ALL the strata, including all the coal bearing strata, sit flat one on top of another everywhere you look at strata, there is absolutely NOTHING between the strata to indicate erosion beyond the minuscule disturbance caused by runoff between the layers. In fact I find it so absurd that geologists make such a claim in the face of the glaring evidence against it you needn't ask me again why I don't "respect" science -- look no further.

There are preserved trees in Michigan that are covered by sand dunes and periodically uncovered and recovered. They are still standing upright.

What is your evidence for this? The pictures at the link prove nothing about anything.

http://michpics.wordpress.com/...-forest-sleeping-bear-point Several layers of sediment have and can continue to form around these trees, and if buried by subsequent processes, this can lead to the formation of polystrate fossils in these cases.

SUCH a handy little just-so story. Again, where is your evidence? Aren't you scientists supposed to be enamored of evidence? According to yourselves anyway. In reality you are really enamored of your own imagination.

Alternatively, a fossil specimen can be deposited on the bottom of an anaerobic pond or streambed and become mummified before it is fossilized, this then keeps the specimen intact as various layers of fine sediment are deposited in several layers around it. The fossils of fish in the green river varves show the characteristics of fossilized mummies with subsequent sedimentary deposits around them.See http://www2.asa3.org/archive/asa/199801/0011.html for and ex-YEC article on the Green River varves.

We aren't talking about evolutionist fantasies about the Green River here. Give some evidence for your claim that the polystrate trees were first fossilized in a depth of sediment that covered them completely and then eroded away before the next layer got deposited.

But there is no end to the scenarios you can imagine to rationalize your belief in evolution. It's all one huge edifice of fantasy without a shred of evidence. Utterly amazing.

But I DO note that RAZD uses the word "layer" Pressie, so get off your high horse in criticizing creationists for it.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Another gem of self-convinced evolutionist "evidence" that evidences nothing against the Flood and quite a bit for it, from EvC:

Creationist says: That means if you know of just one example that shows how normal flood conditions (not catastrophic events like a 4 or above VEI volcano) could produce fossilized surface ripples, then I'd love to here it.

He goes on to give some pictures of different kinds of ripples both fossilized and unfossilized, which of course prove absolutely nothing against the Flood, since such phenomena would very likely have occurred as part of the Flood, and he gives no idea how they managed to get fossilized in "normal flood conditions," but the worldwide Flood is certainly a very likely suspect.

-----
GENERAL PRINCIPLE that never seems to be recognized in this debate: Often the Flood DOES account very well for the phenomena claimed for it but the evolutionists never acknowledge that, simply propose their own scenario to explain it, often local floods. They don't have any evidence that local floods can do what they say they can do but they insist on it anyway. Where's the evidence in anything Dr. A has said on that thread? He has offered none, but somehow this doesn't get noticed. Meanwhile the phenomena that Just Being Real attributes to the Flood of Noah are very well explained by such a flood. Even if the evolutionist can manage to come up with a more or less plausible alternative explanation it's still ONLY an alternative explanation, a possibility, a plausibility, not actual proof against the Flood interpretation. When he says that the sediment layers through which polystrates lie were laid down rapidly he hasn't accounted for the standard claim that the strata represent different eras of millions of years, simply ignored it. Sediments COULD have been laid down rapidly during any of the time periods in question, but no half-buried living thing is going to wait around for the rapid sedimentation of the next million-years period to begin before rotting away to dust. Dr. A needs to explain this.

2 Peter 3:3-7 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as [they were] from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water. Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

MOST IMPORTANT BLOG POSTS

There's something very wrong with the thinking of a Christian who is more worried about being "fooled by God" in an erroneous judgment about, say, a radiometric dating conclusion than he is about being "fooled by God" in the Bible, very wrong because Christians supposedly believe the Bible to be inspired by God, but science is done by fallible human beings.===========================

You want me to respect science. How can I respect Geology when it accepts the idea that a worldwide stack of different kinds of sedimentary rock represents different time periods of millions of years each, and that the bazillions of catastrophically tossed and tumbled dead things contained in them, often in batches of their own kind, represent particular life forms that lived in each "time" period -- all while smugly proclaiming "there is no evidence" for a global Flood. This is so stupid it is amazing that it was ever entertained, but there it is, today's Dogma of Geology. I'm sure they do solid science in spite of it of course, kind of around and under and between it.

EVOLUTIONISM IS A STRONGHOLD TO BE SPIRITUALLY TOPPLED

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

PRAY IT DOWN!

About This Blog

What I want to do here is try to do my best job of stating my own favorite arguments against evolution. There are a couple I think really, logically speaking, ought to bring the whole system crashing down but of course it isn't that easy, human stubbornness being what it is.

There's the geological argument which is basically that you can see with your naked eyes that this world once went through a global Flood, as the Bible reports. That takes care all by itself of the whole Old Earth theorizing that evolution depends on.

And there's the biological argument: It is known that genes DON'T increase although evolution depends on increase. The MORE evolved a species the LESS genetic capacity to evolve it actually has. Breeders certainly know this; and conservationists also know this because genetic depletion in highly specialized species (such as the cheetah) makes them vulnerable to extinction rather than candidates for further variation.

I hope to post on these and other arguments as time permits.

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Ah heck, Mr. Dawkins, we CAN TOO imagine macroevolution by natural selection, same as you can. We can follow out the same Rube-Goldberg sequence of improbable events, acting in a homologically graded series of imaginatively fleshed-out fossils, events that have never been observed in living reality, to the same preconceived conclusion you come to. Our problem is that we know it flies in the face of probability, reason, logic and any other law of rational inquiry and science that may exist, AND that there is no evidence for it, whereas design OBVIOUSLY implies a designer -- obviously, intuitively, rationally, logically, reasonably and probabilistically -- and I'd add "absolutely" if I could get away with it.

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Thinking about the implications of the Biblical creation can sometimes draw you close to God in a way that has to be described as worship. That's the main reason for doing it I think.

IT ISN'T FOR LACK OF EXPOSURE TO SCIENCE

A description of my own experience in answer to the usual denigrating assumption that creationism requires ignorance of science -- not that I claim any scientific sophistication of course, merely a basic understanding of some basic facts and principles.Before I became a Christian I absorbed a lot of the thinking about evolution and tried my best to understand it. Even then I was often frustrated thatevidence trails could just about never be found or followed out to any kind of certainty and I found that I always had to give up trying to follow them and just take the conclusions of the scientists pretty much on faith.I definitely had an interest in understanding evolution. I believed in it; I wanted also to understand it, but I found my desire thwarted by the lack of evidence. Iread the Origin of Species, I read lots of stuff by Stephen Jay Gould, very entertaining stuff, I read Skeptical Inquiry regularly, and so on. I investigated the science claims for evolution about as far as the average intelligent non-scientist can be expected to.

It was only after I became a Christian that I got into studying the creationist answers and took seriously my earlier experience offrustration with the lack of evidence for evolution.I strongly wish that those who find it convincing would rethink it a lot more carefully because the evidence is really not there to the extent you think it is, I suspect you are accepting as evidence all sorts of clever speculations that are not evidence, and are taking most of it on faith in spite of yourself.